Lunch links

Today’s edition of Lunch Links starts out with a review of today’s veto override session in the Senate, which lasted less time that it took you to read this far in this post. This comes after Labor Day weekend stories about Governor Pat McCrory working up to the last minute to convince lawmakers to sustain both his vetoes.

That didn’t work out too well for him. The Senate votes today were 34-10 and 39-5. It makes you wonder who exactly McCrory was reaching out to. And as I said on Twitter after the vote, it’s hard not to think of this as McCrory’s new tagline: “Almost as extreme as the General Assembly and too weak to stop them when he is not.”

In non-veto news, be sure and check out the column in today’s News & Observer by Rob Thompson with the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children about the problems with NC FAST that is supposed to be making it easier for families to receive food assistance, but has actually made things much worse and created huge delays.

And finally on the book and music front, there’s good news to report. Education scholar Diane Ravitch, the brilliant and passionate defender of public schools has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, the appropriately titled “The Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.”